Pros and cons

Pro: I've just rediscovered the very charming and somewhat inspirational website, What I Wore Today, whose owner essentially puts together a different outfit every day and takes a photo of it. I think maybe she's not supposed to wear the same combination of stuff more than once but I'm not sure. Anyway, it's very cute and interesting to see how she puts stuff together in a way you wouldn't necessarily expect.

Con: As a result of getting a little, uh, over-inspired by aforementioned blogger's ability to mix patterns I am currently wearing a floral blue dress, stripey pink cardigan and belt and some, um, pretty cracked out stockings and heels. By which I mean: I LOOK INSANE.

Thoughts I had while watching the truly awful, terrible, please-God-make-it-stop movie, Trojan War

1. Oh dear this movie is so quintessential eighties it's almost charming to look at her hairstyle and what he's wearing and how... ohdearlordno this movie was made in 1997?
2. Seriously? I can't move on. 1997? What is he wearing? Is that a jacket or a house coat. There are no words.
3. Oh, shit, he's the love interest? Jesus wept. I came of age in the nineties and... no. Just no.
4. Although Jennifer Love Hewitt was kind of cute back in the day, no?
5. So, is this movie sort of... racist?
6. Do girls actually refer to their boobs as "breasts"? Like, has anyone has in real life EVER said the words "my supple breasts?" Enquiring minds want to know.
7. Just to confirm: this guy? It's definitely THIS GUY, right? Because he looks like he's 12.
8. Oh, fuck, apparently he's six years older than me. Now I don't know what to think.
9. Yeah this movie is definitely mildly to moderately racist in a way that makes me imagine the writers sitting around a desk saying aloud "Mexicans, eh? Amiright?"
10. Big case of the Donna Martins going on here. Dear writers (monkeys?), it's not enough to have people say what an awesome guy whatshisface is: you actually need to show us SOME evidence of this fact. It's the same way everyone on 90210 used to talk about how gorgeous Donna was when the evidence, um, did not entirely support that theory.
11. Aw that's so sweet. What is more romantic than the dude you're crushing on finally realising (once you put on a slutty dress, obvs) that he'd rather share a chaste peck with you in the moonlight than nail the blonde hottie in someone else's toilet while a third party throws up in the toilet? Besides, you know, EVERYTHING.
12. I've wasted my life.

There are moments

"There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself: 'Do trousers matter?'"

"The mood will pass, sir."

(PG Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters)

Things I should never do again

Drink two big glasses of red and look at the RSPCA's Adopt a Pet website. I'M SORRY KITTIES I WANT YOU ALL.

Apropos of nothing

Every now and again I am reminded, simultaneously, of the reasons why I a) adore the lovely Nick Lezard as much as I do, and b) implied, or maybe actually said, so many years ago on our first acquaintance that he was a smug fucking cock. This column expresses that duality of emotions very well indeed. It's also rather amusing. Which is nice.

The worst people in the world #32

People who don't acknowledge you when you hold the fucking door open for them. Seriously, jerks, I'm not asking for much, I don't even need a verbal "thanks" but a head nod, a smile and some eye contact... two seconds of goddamn recognition that, yes, I am standing there with the door in my hand FOR YOUR FUCKING BENEFIT YOU DOZY FUCKING COW would not go astray. And, yes, two random bitches for whom I held the door today, I am speaking to you.

He didn't even offer to buy me a drink

I've been thinking about boobs lately thanks to two weird incidents. In the first, some dude at a bar told me I had nice tits. Then today I learned, from the guy who is doing my old job, that a former contact of mine had said something to him about my boobs.

Hmm. 

Now, before I go on, I must at least try and convince you, readers, that I'm not trying to pull off a humble brag here by dressing up compliments about my boobs as my Cross To Bear. I think my boobs are perfectly lovely, I'm awfully fond of them, and as far as I'm concerned they deserve all the compliments they get... which are not actually all that frequent actually, although this may or may not be because I spend much of my time jaunting about with McPhee, whose own rack is, to put it politely, extremely impressive. Bitch has got a great set of cans, is all I'm saying.

But I digress.

The thing that got me thinking was my reaction to the two incidents. The one at the bar, although it made me kinda embarassed and a bit uncomfortable, didn't particularly bother me. The dude was drunk and I was at a crowded bar surrounded by friends so I didn't feel intimidated. I think I smiled, muttered "uh, thanks" and promptly turned bright red.

The second incident, in contrast, really did bother me and make me feel downright... uncomfortable. The work contact in question wasn't a friend of mine - I'd probably only met him once or twice - and I'd never even come close to flirting with him because... ew. But for whatever reason, upon meeting my replacement for the first time and in a professional situation this guy felt completely comfortable talking about my boobs. As far as he knew my replacement, in addition to being a colleague, could also have been my best friend, my boyfriend or my brother. I can only imagine how said colleague, who is lovely and far too sweet for this shit, reacted at the time. Nervous laughter, presumably.

I'm really not sure what point I'm trying to make here: that I feel more comfortable with guys being kinda sleazy to my face than behind my back? Not, um, exactly. That it's strange and kinda fucked up that some dudes think it's perfectly normal to discuss a woman's boobs with one of her colleagues without fear of recrimination just because he's talking to another dude? I... don't know. Maybe. All I know is that my boobs and I feel vaguely hurt and sad and weirded out by the whole thing. Also I'm maybe now going to have to start about investing in a whole bunch of high-necked jumpers and bulky scarves to pad out my work uniform. Boo. Hiss.

N.B: It goes without saying that the woman above, the super cute Kelly Brook, is not me. Nor do my boobs resemble hers. But in a world where most of the women I see in magazines or whatever are super skinny with either no boobs or fake boobs it's sometimes awfully nice to see a hottie cruising around in a dress with a natural pair of big boobs. Um, nice tits, Kelly, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Things that may have helped me enjoy the film Magic Mike more than I did...

... ALL THE BOOZE.

(N.B: Although I will say it was good, clean, schlocky fun)

I can't do that, Dave

Please note that for some reason my computer or, more likely, Blogspot is messing with me so that parts of some of my blog posts get randomly sort of... highlighted in white for no good reason. Like the post below. I'm sort of half arsedly trying to figure out what's wrong but for now just, um, ignore it with my apologies. I would consider bitching about what an outrage this is but since I'm paying exactly fuck all for the service it seems a trifle rich.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Andrew Garfield

I received an interesting message from my friend Jayne the other day, reading simply: Is Andrew Garfield  in the Venn Diagram? I vote yes.

Jayne and I, you see, have very different taste in boys. She likes them fit and muscular enough to (I'm editorialising now) throw her around like a rag doll, should circumstances permit. I prefer them scruffy and skinny enough to disappear when they turn sideways. Still every now and again the stars align and the circles of our respective Venn diagrams overlap, most notably in the case of Swedish hottie Alexander Skarsgaard.

But... Andrew Garfield? This I hadn't expected. I'd noticed him, idly, in The Social Network and thought he was cute but other than being vaguely aware he was going out with the seems-so-charming Emma Stone I hadn't thought about him since.  Then blammo he wandered onscreen in The Amazing Spider Man and I was smitten. (Meanwhile let me point out that The Amazing Spider Man is not a great movie. I was coaxed in against my will and it was, you know, fine and perfectly okay but all that was good about that movie can be laid at the feet of Andrew Garfield who was, it must be said, too good for the material. )


Did you ever have that thing where you had a crush on someone and your friends just Did Not Get It. You'd be babbling on about his smile or what he'd said to you ("hey, you dropped your pen") and they'd be all "him, really?" That's Andrew Garfield. Looking at the photo of him I've put in above the thing is... I don't particularly fancy him. He's got good bone structure, sure, but his eyes are maybe on the small side, his nose is semi-goblinesque and his hair looks FUCKING INSANE. 

But that is the secret of Andrew Garfield: he is greater than the sum of his parts. Walking and talking around onscreen he is adorable and charming, subtly sexy without trying to hard and simultaneously, I don't know... goofy? If I have an achilles heel when it comes to boys it's all about the smile. I am a sucker for a killer grin and Andrew Garfield has one of the best smiles I've seen in quite the long time. (As an aside why am I still referring to him by his full name instead of just Andrew or Garfield? Andrew Garfield, Andrew Garfield, Andrew Garfield, somebody stop me).

The only time when my lust faltered during the movie's 136 minutes (seriously, Hollywood, action movies should not be longer than 2 hours and this trend is getting fucking insane please stop, I could have cut half an hour out of this movie with my eyes closed) was when Andrew Garfield (I can't stop now) took off his shirt to reveal he was, in fact, quite insanely buff. Put it back on, I hissed in my mind and, to my delight, he eventually obliged. Somewhere in another cinema, on another day and in another part of town I like to imagine Jayne was begging him to take it back off.

All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that Andrew Garfield is a pretty decent actor, a certified Kate-approved hottie and most definitely belongs smack back in the centre of the Kate and Jayne Venn Diagram of Lust.

I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a spring

I've never been able to get into Proust - I suppose I'm a bit too stupid - but in some respects this song is my madeleine back to my youth, watching my parents getting ready to go out.

Insert your own jeans vs genes joke here

Today has been a shitty day. I am laid low, frustrated, melancholy and terribly, terribly bored. So what a delight to get some good news in the form of (ultra-unverified, I'm not kidding: the original source of this yarn was the Daily Mail) suggestions skinny jeans are destroying men's sperm count. I say good news because, much as I feel for anyone who wants to have children and is unable to do so, I love a good pair of skinny jeans on an equally skinny chap with about as much enthusiasm as I generally dislike children*. The only possible downside of this snippet of news that I can see is that skinny boys may abandon their skinny jeans for fear of missing out on the chance to pass their skinny genes on to the next generation. THAT would be a true tragedy.


*Children directly related to me being the one and only exception. They're... fine.

Overheard in the office, Thursday

"Hmmm... hmmm... okay, yes, I don't think we'd be interested in doing a story on that. No... no, I'm sorry we're just not interested in a story about your husband being in love with a Dutch backpacker."

Spy me to the moon

A distinctly odd interview this week from Jules Oliver, wife to celeb chef Jamie, in which she admitted she regularly snoops on her husbands emails, text messages and twitter to make sure he's not screwing around.

Putting aside the question of why anyone would publicly confess to a practice that, although I guess it's maybe not uncommon, makes you look hopelessly insecure this is a subject on which I Have Views That Require Airing. So, you know, fairly warned be thee, say I.

I did once snoop on a partner's emails many many years ago. At the time it felt semi-justified because I was looking for details about the strumpet bitch drug-addict probably-perfectly-nice girl he'd been quietly romancing on the side. Afterwards, when my need to Find All Of The Details had worn off I just felt lame and a bit pathetic. And, like so many snoopers before and after me, I didn't find anything that did me any good. (Actually I didn't find anything at all. Very frustrating, I assure you.)

My real problem with snooping, however, is that it robs your partner of the ability to have a private life and perpetuates the ludicrous idea that you should share everything with your partner, do everything with your partner and tell your partner everything. Sex columnist Dan Savage got it right when he said, so many columns ago I can't be bothered looking it up, that it's a relationship, not a deposition.

However good a relationship is, unless you are the most motherfucking boring person on the planet there are thoughts, ideas or desires you will have that you won't tell your partner about. And in my experience the easiest way to become a dull person and a worse partner is to surrender your personality at the door and forget to have a life outside your partner that not only makes you a more rounded person but at the very least gives you something to talk about when you're together. People who don't appear to have friends that aren't also friends with their partner make me very sad, is what I guess I'm saying, just as I get super depressed when friends appear unable to catch up for so much as a coffee or a drink or a movie without bringing their partner along for the ride ("Oh it's... Bob... again. What a surprise.")

In any seriously long term relationship there are - at least God I hope I'm not alone on this one - times when you just... don't like your partner very much. Times when you hate them a little bit maybe. Certainly there are times when you are so bored with them you could jump out the window for something to do. In a successful relationship (ie: one that lasts for a long time, I guess, and ideally ends with one of you dropping dead), these times are outweighed by the comparatively good times. In an unsuccessful relationship the bits that shit you outweigh the pleasures and comforts.These shitty times, the times when you are bored or frustrated or angry in your relationship, are the times when you need, most of all, to have a life outside your relationship. Otherwise you will very likely wind up wanting to pursue another relationship altogether.

In my current and past relationships there have been times when I bitched about my partners to friends, pondered leaving them aloud and flirted with people who were not them. Were these behaviourss particularly respectful to my partners at the time? Well, no, not really. Were they necessary? For me, yes, I really think they were. Or are.

Similarly I assume that both my current and past partners have, at various times, said things about me to their friends ("her boobs are shit") or said things not about me to other girls ("your boobs are amazing") that might crush me if I knew about them. But the important thing here - the point I'm trying to make - is that they don't crush me because I don't know about them. And, as far as I'm concerned, I really don't need to.

Give me success or take this desire away from me. One of the two.

This article about auditioning for the Boston Symphony Orchestra is long. Maybe too long. But it's worth it for the last line.

Because I am very mature...

... I definitely did not giggle to myself when I read Tony Abbott's comments about it being Un-Christian to "use the back door". For God's sake nobody let him google the term "saddlebacking".

Things I remember from a night on the turps that I maybe wish I didn't:

1. An argument with a colleague about whether The Go-Betweens were a great Australian band. I remember him saying "I'm sick of this Richard Kingsmill crap..." I don't remember what I said back but I'm sure it was incredibly rational and well argued.

2. Reading out smutty bits from Timothy Conigrave's wonderful autobiography Holding The Man on McPhee's couch.

3. The balloon! The steak knife! It wasn't my idea, I definitely remember that.

What does the worst hangover of recent memory feel like?

It feels like a churning stomach. It feels like a pounding behind your eyes that doesn't go away. It feels like embarrassment for not properly remembering all the conversations you had the night before. It feels like anxiety at what you might have said or done. It feels like relief for not doing what you'd feared. It feels like a waste of a Sunday.

How to break a journalist's heart: a reader's guide

"I read your story in the paper today. Well, I didn't read it all but I got the gist."

Token Smokin' Hottie: Fabian Cancellara

First of all, a quiet word of reassurance to Andy Schleck, lest he be sweating, to assure him that he remains my guilty cycling crush and if he was riding in this year's Tour de France this post would be about him. Awkward looking he may be, super skinny he certainly is and if you were to suggest that his nose is kind of big and his ears sort of... stick out, you wouldn't be exactly WRONG. Nevertheless I love the Schleckmeister to pieces and wish to assure all concerned that what follows does not diminish that love...

All that said Fabian Cancellara is kind of a hot piece of cycling arse, isn't he? Come on. Look at that face. Those muscles. That face. Can we get a close up on the face?

Cancellara always had a certain something-something but this year it seems like he's slimmed down a bit and, skinny boys being my kryponite, I have sat up and taken notice. Will this slimmed down frame be enough to make Cancellara (already awesome on the time-trialling) into a mountain climber to beat the likes of Wiggins or Evans? Seems highly doubtful - he's still pretty big for a climber - which I'm hoping will prompt him to lose even more weight by this time next year, thus exposing even more of the Cancellara cheekbones I have come to know and love and get those hip bones... yeah, yeah, okay, I know, I may... have some problems.

Cancellara appeals to me in the same way the likes of Roger Federer appeals to me: both men are awesome at what they do, which is always hot, and both have a certain rough European handsomness that is very appealing. Is it racist to fancy someone because they look kinda foreign? Let's say... no.

In some respects Cancellara embodies the very essence of what it is to be a token smokin' hottie: having no knowledge of his personality or temperament I fancy him purely on the strength of some solid bone structure, a cute smiles and a body that... well, I tend to think I'm not really into boys' bodies, per se, but in this case I'll make an exception. I could go on. I mean I really Could Go On but sadly the Tour de France is starting and I have... business to attend to.

Words I had to edit around or cut out of stories today

1. fuckwit
2. fucked
3. fuck
4. fucking

It was kind of a good day.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Paul Keating

I have two pictures hanging in my living room but the one that faces me when I curl up in 'my' corner of the couch is of Paul Keating. I'm looking at him right now. He's youngish in this photo, maybe in his thirties, speaking into a radio microphone, a big pair of earphones half on, half off his head. He looks, I'll be honest, readers, fucking amazing.

Keating. Oh KEATING. I love him so much. I could not love him more. And so of course, I live in constant hope/fear I'll be told to interview him for work and in the process make an absolute tit of myself. Kind of like the time I had to interview my nerdy crush Niall Ferguson (shut up) and blushed so hard the entire way through I could feel the heat radiating off my cheeks

The thing a lot of people who love Keating love about him is his wit, his put downs, and I'm no exception (if you need a refresher you can get a taste here).

But Keating's gift for barbs means some people (*cough* Andy *cough*) are critical of my Keating love and accuse him of being a big fat bully.

To which I say: have you read Keating's infamous 1992 Redfern speech? I mean have you READ it? Keating may have bullied other pollies in his time and tolerated exactly zero fools but I don't think that a man who can deliver a speech like that can be called cruel. What's that you say? You want to read an extract of this speech I'm talking about? Oh, well, okay if you insist.

"... As I said, it might help us if we non-Aboriginal Australians imagined ourselves dispossessed of land we had lived on for fifty thousand years - and then imagined ourselves told that it had never been ours. Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it was worthless. Imagine if we had resisted this settlement, suffered and died in the defence of our land, and then were told in history books that we had given up without a fight. Imagine if non-Aboriginal Australians had served their country in peace and war and were then ignored in history books. Imagine if our feats on sporting fields had inspired admiration and patriotism and yet did nothing to diminish prejudice... There is one thing today we cannot imagine. We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through fifty thousand years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation. We cannot imagine that. We cannot imagine that we will fail."

I mean, come on. Come ON. That speech was made 20 years ago and have you ever heard a politician make a better one?

There seems to be a general kind of idea, perpetuated through dopey magazine articles and the like, that personality is more important for women fancying men than it is for men fancying women. Most of the time I think this is bullshit because I am as superficial as any boy I know. But at times I have to concur that personality can, just a little bit, outweigh other considerations. You see Current Day Keating is not a dreamboat. I'm not blind: dude is getting old and kinda... jowly. Even Young Keating, although undeniably slicky and kind of handsome, was not really physically my type. But would I, given the opportunity, throw it all away for a simply FILTHY weekend in a white sheeted hotel room with our former Prime Minister and an open mini-bar? Weeeeell, the answer to that question is between me and my diary, readers, but I can say this: I would give it a bloody long hard think.

“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.” (Douglas Adams)

Methods for dealing with anxiety over starting what is kind of (but not exactly) a new job:

1. Ignore. Deny. Repress.
2. Spend your Sunday morning trying to get some work done ahead of time so you look super prepared. Realise your work is shit and you have no idea what you're doing. Freak out even more.
3. Um, drink?

Rock it

When I first heard about a Japanese-built robot that beats humans at rock, paper, scissors every time I thought it sounded a) kinda cool and b) like the first sign of a coming apocalypse in which artificially intelligent robots enslave us all (I for one welcome our new robot overlords...). Turns out the robot is just a big fat cheater.

Kinkery Fuckery

I've never understood girls who get upset by their partner's interest in porn but I do have friends who feel that way, for whatever weird and stupid reason (sorry chums but it really is pretty weird and stupid) and it does seem like there are people out there who think that porn is gross and wrong and represents the decay of society when seriously they should be more worried about shit like the viewing figures for Being Lara Bingle. So I kinda enjoyed this column at The Punch about how soft porn for women like 50 Shades of Grey is dismissed as harmless and/or liberating while porn for straight dudes involving tits and cunts is depraved and wrong and just a little bit icky. Also the author of the above article, Stephen Harrington, is a bit of a dish, no? I'm just saying.

Lessons? (Warning: contains spoilers for the movie Take This Waltz)

Lessons I Feel I Was Supposed to Learn From The Movie Take This Waltz

1. Don't fancy people who are not your husband.
2. If you must fancy people who are not your husband try not to live near them.
3. If you must live within fucking distance of people who are not your husband you should probably leave said husband so you can fuck your fanciable neighbour.
4. If you follow step 3 you will be unhappy. Probably.

Lessons I Actually Learned From The Movie Take This Waltz

1. If you fall for a hot, pretentious stranger you cannot avoid then you should probably seriously consider having sex with fanciable neighbour to get it out of your system and never, ever tell your plump, adorable husband about it. I'm just saying. Could've saved everyone some drama.

I don't want to turn this into fucking poetry corner or anything but is there anything better than Langston Hughes on form?

What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?
(Langston Hughes)

I say this as someone who likes most of what Aaron Sorkin has done and loves some of it...

... but The Newsroom is not good. It might even be quite bad. This makes me sad.

The weirdest thing someone said to me when I told them I was switching jobs at work

"Yeah I never really thought you were right for [the job I've been doing for the last four and a half years]... I don't mean that in a negative way."

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole

There are moments in life that I am filled with a deep sense of gratitude for some of the people in my life. Receiving this morning's email from the wonderful Belle, containing simply a link to this -

"You don’t like that your coworker used me on that note about stealing her yogurt from the break room fridge? You don’t like that I’m all over your sister-in-law’s blog? You don’t like that I’m on the sign for that new Thai place? You think I’m pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don’t all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can’t all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I’m standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest. Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once."

- and a subject line that read "One for your Helvetica necklace" was one of those times.

Depressing emails from my boss I have received today

Great yarn about [a company I cover] in [a rival newspaper] today.

I think I might be a moron

At the very least I'm starting to forget what words mean. Or maybe I never knew. I just googled the word "dictum" because I wanted to use it in a work story and realised I wasn't sure if I was using it right. Moron. Same deal yesterday when I described someone in a story as "avuncular". The longer I stared at the word the less and less certain I was that I actually knew what it meant. Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are right: excessive diet coke consumption is eating away at my brain. I'm even more of a moron because now I'm sitting here thinking how much happier I would be trying to write this STUPID work story with a diet coke at my elbow. If I open up my front door to find an ice-cold diet coke on the step I think I might actually start believing in God.

UPDATE: No diet coke. Atheism remains intact. Probably all for the best.

This Les Miserables trailer would be perfect...

... if only they'd used another song, like "One Day More" maybe or my own weak spot, "Bring Him Home" because now I'm now concerned that my deep distaste for both Anne Hathaway and the character Fantine (seriously, just - SPOILER - die already) is going to ruin this movie, which I really really really want to love. That much said I'd be lying if I said I wasn't almost paralysed by excitement.

Symptom Recital

(A belated  nod to my beloved Dorothy Parker on

the 45th anniversary of her death earlier this month.)

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the simplest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick. I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore:
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men.
I'm due to fall in love again.

(DP)

Ignoring logistics I just feel like it would be really, really cold for both parties

I know it’s the done thing to rag on glossy women’s magazines about how terribly superficial they are, how boring, how pandering to gender stereotypes and how I absolutely never so much as glance in their direction at the newsagent because I’m too busy reading the fucking New Yorker and teaching myself Spanish, but the truth is that I have always loved a good magazine.

As I mentioned on this blog only too recently, I had my first Proper Journalist Job on a women's magazine and it was the kind of wonderful experience that has given me lifelong appreciation of the work that goes into the magazines I still read if not routinely then at least on a semi-regular basis. Coupled with that, I grew up reading Dolly and Girlfriend before graduating to Cosmo (and ultimately onto my current mish-mash crop of In-Style, Marie Claire and Madison, the latter being one of those magazines I always think is going to be better than it is, although I digress) and I believe those magazines were helpful to a shy young girl with no tits who genuinely didn't know why her classmates snickered when someone asked for a "rubber".

Nevertheless, I have to concede that in a lifetime of reading magazines I have come across some fairly crazy fucking shit which, I have to believe, the journos threw in on deadline because they were desperate or just really wanted to get out of the office to go to their friend's party because that dude they have a crush on said he'd totally be there.

Sadly, I have long-since thrown out all of my old magazines. So God bless Jezebel, which has reprinted this article on Cosmo's 44 Most Ridiculous Sex Tips, which - and I can't stress this enough, readers - should not be tried at home.

Here's just a sample of what I'm talking about but the whole thing is extremely amusing and you can read it here.

On handjobs: 

"Hold his penis in one hand and lightly slap it with the other... you can tap it back and forth like you're volleying a tennis ball and lightly pinch the skin on his shaft and testicles. Many women make the mistake of being too gentle."Second opinion: make the mistake of being too gentle. At least until you ask.

On blowjobs: 

"Chew a small piece of mango... then take him in your mouth. You can use whatever fruit you have, just don't try anything too acidic, as it can burn him."Non-acidic fruit won't burn... but it will probably feel just as weird and pulpy as it sounds. 

On tits: 

"Receive a butterfly kiss... of your breasts. To do: he bats his eyelids against the supersensitive underside of your breasts."He might have to insert his head into your chest cavity, forehead up, but give it a shot. 

On a whole bunch of random shit: 

"Take a few of your favorite erotically appealing flavor combinations, like peanut butter and honey or whipped cream and chocolate sauce, and mix up yummy treats all over his body."There's a variation on this mainstay of the Cosmo canon in almost every issue. Successfully incorporating food into sex - based on my life experiences and casual surveys - is not a real thing. It's sticky, wrecks the sheets, and, if done frequently, will give you Type II diabetes. 

"Keep a spray bottle filled with ice water next to the bed, and give each other a strategic spritz to extend the encounter... Aim for the nerve-packed, thin-skinned areas on each other's body, such as the nipples."On an unrelated note, this is also a great way to train your cat not to pee on the rug. 

"Record your voice on your cell the next time you have a solo session. Then, send him the audio file in the middle of the day, with just the text, 'Wanna hear me do this tonight?'"In the middle of the day. Best time. Right when he's at work. No way that could go wrong.

Boys, if you think we're making this shit up you have no idea. I remember when I was still reading Cosmo, it would have been in the late nineties, and every single fucking sealed sex section ever must have had this one tip where you were supposed to put a shitload of ice in your mouth for an eeeextra special blowjob that would blow your partner's mind or something. Even then, as inexperienced, ignorant and far from being called up to give a blowjob anytime soon as I was, I think I knew that was a really terrible fucking idea.

Questions I had after one of the cartoonists at work drew my picture to commemorate my new haircut (yeah it was a quiet day):

1. Are my boobs that big?

2. Are my hips that round?

3. Is my skirt that short?

4. Is possible said cartoonist is just kind of a perv?

Riddle me this

How is it I can buy a pair of flat shoes that are perfectly cute for $10 but my stockings - which are nude fishnets and therefore consist of basically zero material - cost $25? Enquiring minds want to know.

Fuck You,

Fuck you random guy who sent me that email. You know which one I'm talking about: the one where you started off politely with a "You don't know me but..." before segueing into your stupid hypothetical question about my views on the role of a journalist (the fuuuuu....?) because you needed to know "how professional [I am]".

Seriously: fuck you and no I shall not reply to you. I shall not, Sir! I have started a reply email several times since receiving yours but each time I find myself unable to come up with something remotely civil to write back. "Do you want to try rewriting this email without the implied insult?" Is about the closest I've come and even then I have to stop myself from adding a vitriolic PS that's basically just me mashing the keyboard at random.

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions but I wouldn't be quite so pissed off if I didn't strongly suspect that at least some of your shitty attitude stems from the fact that I'm a girl writing about a very male-dominated industry.

Probably I also wouldn't be quite so shitty if your shitty email didn't remind me so much of a conversation I had maybe a year ago with some other dickhead on the phone. Bear in mind this was the first time I'd ever spoken to this douche who - like you, I suspect - was a random member of the public wanting me to write about a dodgy company in which he was an investor. It went something like this:

Him: (Blah, blah, blah)... Tell me, do you understand the concept of internal rate of return.

Me: Yes.

Him: What do you understand by it?

Me: (Pause) Why are you asking me this?

Him: I just want to know that you know what you're talking about.

Me: (Silence).

What. The. Fuck. Seriously: what the fuck?! When I go into the doctor about that weird lump on my earlobe (um, seriously, it's actually starting to freak me out a bit) do I start our session by asking if he or she knows the proper name for my funny bone? No. No I do not. Because I am not a psycho.

Just because I have tits and got kinda crappy marks in my Applicable Maths TEE exam 11 years ago (although, hah, you have know way of knowing that so suck it!) please do not assume that I'm not good at my job. I mean, I'm no scientician but I'm pretty sure the addition of a cock would not necessarily improve my ability to perform the tasks I am paid to.

But it's been a long, rough week. I've had stress and disappointment at work and in my personal life. I've stumbled across unpaid bills I'd forgotten existed and I've just realised I made a big mistake on last year's tax return. Generally I feel like a confused little pony that's been ridden hard and put away wet. As a result, perhaps I've judged you too hastily and inaccurately. Certainly I apologise in advance if any of the sweeping conclusions I've made about your reasons for writing that shitty email were incorrect and you're in fact a right-on feminist kind of a guy whose reasonable comments have been misinterpreted by my tired old brain. But, on reflection, I really, really doubt it so, honestly, fuck you again.

Regards etc

Token Smokin' Hottie: Ripley

Fear not, men of the world, I haven't gone over to the ladies. My deep and abiding love for Ripley (a fictional character, obviously, as if I need to point out that I'm not talking about the actress Sigourney Weaver) has nothing to do with wanting to get her into bed. Although, you know, should this somehow become a possibility I'm not entirely ruling it out. She is pretty cute and with her biceps I bet she could throw me around like a rag doll.

Having seen Prometheus at the weekend (forget the haters: I thought it was great schlocky fun, much of which didn't make a lick of sense and really didn't have to) I subsequently rewatched Alien, which is - for a sci-fi movie made in freaking 1979 - holding up pretty damn well. I've seen the sequel, Aliens, plenty of times because it's a classic but it'd been ages since I'd gone back to the first movie and I'd forgotten how much I love, love, love Ripley. Of course she is awesome in Aliens, where she's super tough right from the start (is it possible to NOT get chills every time you hear "get away from her you bitch"?), but I think I almost like her better in Alien, where she's a bit softer around the edges but you can see her hardening up as crew members around her keep, uh, dying horrifically. (Is that a spoiler? I don't think it's a spoiler. If you haven't got around to seeing Alien sometime in the past 30+ years you're probably not going to go out and see it tomorrow. Although, really, you should. It's great fun.)

Only when you get a movie (or indeed a string of movies) with a bitchingly awesome female lead - particularly in, although not limited to the action genre - who isn't just a love interest do you realise how few and far between they are. I'm not trying to make this into a rant but, seriously, it's a rarity and it can be a bit depressing. Do I need to explain why the likes of Angelina Jolie as the titular (heh) star of Tomb Raider doesn't count? No? Good.

Movies like Alien make me want to do away with M or MA ratings for movies because shit like this shouldn't be kept from kids: it should be fucking forced on young girls to stop them from growing up on a diet of nothing but bullshit movies/TV that tells them their happiness is tied to their ability to weigh less than 120 pounds, have perky tits and find "The One" (again, do I even need to talk about how bullshit this idea of The One is? Is that a conversation that's even worth starting? No? Aw, you guys are the best).

What better role model for the youth of today than Ripley, who starts off the movie disobeying her Captain's orders because she knows best. And she's right: she does know best. It's just a pity everyone else are kind of fucking morons and the only other smart person on the ship is a) evil as fuck b) an android.

To summarise, Ripley is everything a girl should be: tough, brave, smart, likes cats and I love her. And, hey, nobody ever said it was a crime to look good in a tank-top and a pair of skimpy undies.

I grow old (I shall wear my trousers rolled)

Comments friends or colleagues have made when seeing me for the first time since I cut my hair that makes me think they hate it and don't know how to tell me:

1. Wow

2. You've... cut your hair.

3. It's really short.

4. It's... shorter than I expected.

5. Do you miss it?

Balancing the scale

Often when I want to buy something I don't need (a second third copy of Maurice, perhaps, yet another pair of red heels, a $6.70 soy mocha) I tell myself that it's okay because I don't smoke. I mean, if I smoked just think of how much money I'd spend on cigarettes every day, week, month. If that's not enough (I mean, I'm just not sure I need a second poncho-jumper) I up the stakes: well, what if I was a CRACK addict, what about HEROIN? Imagine how much cash I'd blow through then. I'm saving hundreds of bucks with all this clean living I'm doing over here. I'd draw you a graph to explain just how this works but you probably wouldn't understand it.

I mention this because it's occurred to me lately that I'm not a particularly good person. I'm no monster - I try not to actively make other peoples' lives worse, I have my handful of standing orders in place - but there are many aspects of my character I don't particularly like and a few that make me feel downright awful if I think about them too hard, which obviously I try very hard not to do. With this in mind I have compiled a list of bad traits/character flaws I do not possess to convince myself I don't really need to change my ways and be a better person. So, you know, I may be kind of a cruddy human being at times but at least I don't...

• Kill people. That's right. I'm setting the bar pretty low. I don't kill people. I have never shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. That's something, right?
• Hurt Animals. Again: no shit. Who the fuck DOES hurt animals/kill people except serial killers or serial killers in the making? Patting myself on the back for this one seems like describing someone as a great boyfriend because he only hits you where it doesn't show. But bear with me, I'm just warming up.
• Double dip. On the other end of the spectrum, sure, but still: that's a check in the plus column.
• Wear harem pants. I will never undertand the appeal of these diaper pants. If you want a pair of pants you can do a shit and nobody will notice maybe you need to re-evaluate your life.
• Ignore Beggars. Okay, so I'm really sure randoms begging on the side of the street reeeeally appreciate my patronising smile and whispered "I'm sorry" when I don't have change/am not in the mood. Doubtless my recognition of their humanity Makes Their Day. No wait, I think they'd prefer $5.
• Kill Spiders. I'm not quite sure this is a virtue (does the world really need more spiders?) but I have to believe that opting not to kill a sentient being when you can just as easily trap it in a glass and escort it politely out to the garden makes the world a slightly better place. Flies of the world may disagree with me.
• Write indulgent blogs that will only be of passing interest to close friends who take an active interest in my life and absolutely nobody else. Oh, wait...

Awkward Work Conversations I Have Had...

... With the woman who sits very close to my desk at work and seems to think (incorrectly, honest) that I am behind a complaint lodged (anonymously) about her inanity. It was bad enough when she asked me about it in the office hallway but when she cornered me in the bathroom things got awkward... not as awkward as a little bit later when she came up to my desk, trying to speak through her TEARS, but still, you know, AWKWARD.

Things that are currently not working in my apartment (or why I sometimes despair at living in an apartment built in 1939 even though none of these things have anything to do with that fact).:

1. The washing machine.
2. The internet.
3. The water heater.
4. My brain.

I was going to say...

... that awkward moment when you realise the fresh-faced, super young and cute dude you were trying to make blush just for funsies may have been your friend's little (much younger) brother.

But that was days ago. Today a little bit of Facebook stalking has me nearly convinced said boy wasn't my friend's little brother at all but a legitimate party guest whose name I've forgotten but who was almost certainly of legal age. At least, you know, I really fucking hope so.

The enabler

Him: Do you want a port?

Me: Hmm yeah I'm not supposed to be weekday drinking this week.

Him: Port doesn't count.

Me: Okay then.

Highlights and lowlights

Highlight: I survived my first day back at work!
Lowlight: I cried.
Highlight: Nobody saw me!

By the by (In case you're looking for something to read this public holiday)

Great Sam de Brito column today I thought, which articulated many of my own feelings on an incredibly tacky story which irritated me no fucking end when I read it. Pass me a sick bag please.

Things that make me feel like I am maybe not a proper grown-up even though I am by now quite, quite old:

1. I don't have any bandaids in the house. This fact I did not discover until I damaged my poor feet trying to break in a pair of shoes which, now that I think about it, may be a smidgen too small for me. When I lived at home Mum and Dad's bathroom cabinet was chock full of medical supplies, both minor and major. So now I guess I have to... buy them myself?

2. I faintly resent having to pay for my own medication. Similar theme to number one. I don't have big medical expenses but I do have to take a pill for my stupid thyroid every day, which I resent deeply. It's by no means a big expense but shouldn't all my money be disposable income to spend on books I don't read and shoes that don't fit? Don't you want to keep me alive by paying for this stuff, Mum and Dad?

3. There is nothing to eat in my fridge except for an elderly piece of lasagna left over from a giant lasagna which my mother made me. No explanation required.

4. I am so broke my card got declined when I tried to buy a veggie burger at the pub. A veggie burger. And a diet coke. That was a sad day and I'm sure the woman behind the bar was not fooled by my "oh um, *ahem* guess that money hasn't come through... shall we just try credit then shall we?" SHAME.

Overhead in Perth: Outside the Flying Scotsman

"Connections is that way hahaha."

- Some random fucker sitting outside the pub. I can only assume he was talking to one of the dudes who walked past in skinny jeans but really, Perth? I mean REALLY?

Things I maybe possibly regret from last night

1. Deciding I just didn't need dinner before going to the party.
2. Having a sip of Jose's weird, kind of awful vodka drink.
3. Slurring "you're adorable" to some poor frightened cutie with amazing hair as I ran out the door (he was though).

Surprising benefit to having short hair that I had not anticipated

Slightly slutty clothes look slightly less slutty than when I wore them with long hair. I don't know why this is but I swear it's true. It's not that I favour particularly slutty clothes, it's just that I have reasonably prominent boobs and somehow the presence of said boobs has the potential to make anything remotely low cut look borderline pornographic. True story. Anyway, I bet if I cut off another two inches I could get away with a keyhole neckline. This. Is. Living.

Apropos of nothing: Top 5 of my 25 most played songs according to my iPhone

I don't know how my iPhone works these things out and, frankly, I have my doubts about some of the songs on this list but, eh, it's rainy and cold outside, I'm supposed to be finishing my tax return and I'm looking for something, anything, to distract me right now. Play on.

Real Estate, It's Real
No surprises. My favourite song from one of my favourite albums from last year and one of those songs that basically sounds like happiness. Plus I listened to this album a lot in Italy. Like, maybe too much.


The Go-Betweens, Love Goes On
Again, no surprise. My favourite song off the only mix tape I've been given in a good three years. Charming.


Frankie Rose, Know Me.
This one surprised me. Yes it's a super cute song from a super cute album but have I seriously listened to it more than the many other cute songs on my iPhone? Apparently so.


Fleetwood Mac, Everywhere
Look, I could defend this one and honestly I... have my doubts this belongs on the list. But the fact is that there are times in my life when only a little slice of Fleetwood Mac will do.


Atlas Sound, The Shakes
I don't know what it is but the way he sings "found money... and fame" just kills me.

"To be stupid, selfish and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost." (Gustave Flaubert)

The last bottle was a mistake

Days spent in Italy without getting a hangover: 26
Days spent in Perth without getting a hangover: 2

Sometimes a quote is all you need...

‎"So your boyfriend walked in and saw you fucking the face of a dead bear. That's going to look bad even to a boyfriend who isn't a vegan."

(You can read the rest here).

Movie Scene Monday: Manhattan

Manhattan is probably only number three when it comes to my favourite Woody Allen movies, comfortably behind Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters, but it has one of my all time favourite opening scenes for any movie. The city, the music, the jokes... insert your own swoon here: for me it's just perfect.

Confessions of a first time reader of Gone With the Wind

1. I didn't find the book's racism distractingly offensive. I know I'm supposed to be offended or at least mention how off-putting it is to have the book's white characters constantly talking shit about "the darkies" but, eh, the book's treatment of black people is so completely ridiculous to a 2012 reader that it sort of... didn't even register enough to be have an impact on my enjoyment on the book. I choose to believe that I'm not a secretly racist monster but was merely distracted because I did most of my reading on a plane, on which I also watched a few episodes of the sitcom 2 Broke Girls which, um, kind of really does seem quite racist. I'm just saying.

2. I skim-read most of the stuff about the civil war. This is supposed to be A War Book as much as it's A Romance Book but, eh, I really couldn't give two shits about the war when a) it's not really a secret how that ended and b) there are Scarlett schemes to be hatched, dresses to wear and parties to attend. Same thing happened when I read Lion of Macedon, the charming David Gemmell novel that got me into the fantasy genre as a teenager. That book contains a fair amount of ancient military strategy stuff that I suppose is really very interesting if you like that kind of thing but even on re-reads I breeze through all that crap in favour of the juicy 'will Parmenion ever be happy and when is Alexander the Great going to turn up?' gloop.

3. I... really liked Scarlett O'Hara. I mean I didn't even realise that was an even slightly contentious position until I read this most amusing article, which sums up her character thusly:

"Which leads us into this: are we supposed to like Scarlett?... What's to like, when you think about it? She's a terrible friend, she's borderline illiterate, she's racist, she's violent, she's ungrateful, she wallows in minor bouts of regret for being such a shitty person once she's achieved her next aim, and she accepts expensive gifts from gentlemen without thinking of the consequences. (Just candy and flowers, darlings! Keep your virtue with you at all times!) And, not to be all "I have a chiiiiiild now" about the whole thing, but WHAT ABOUT WADE AND ELLA? CHRIST ON A FUCKING CROSS. We all remember Bonnie, because she broke her neck, and had a bit of a personality (Margaret Mitchell did not seem like a kid-friendly individual, no?), but those sad, bland, dull children with dead fathers, dragged along behind her curtain-dresses and treated slightly less well than her ill-treated friends and acquaintances are far more tragic figures than smokin' hot twenty-eight year olds who went from being rich to very briefly poor to substantially richer over the course of a thousand pages. (I know, I know, her parents kicked it, which was very sad, and she had to wear black, which was uncomfortably hot, etc.)."

And, well, yes and no. Yes Scarlett is king of, um, a sociopath but she's also feisty and brave and honestly who among us can't identify a little with her 'I want what I don't have at least in part because I don't have it' mentality? Plus the bit about her being a terrible friend is true but, in fairness to Scarlett, the other girls in the book are all kind of twits, either dull and dumb like that stupid bitch who wanted to marry Charles or fucking Melanie The Martyr who is supposedly beloved by all for her goodness and generous nature but would be INSUFFERABLE if you actually had to put up with her shit for five minutes. I like to think the author, Margaret Mitchell, hated Melanie and based her character on someone in her own life because, really, the way Scarlett bitches about Melanie being Melanie is simply too funny.

4. If I had read this book 10 years ago I would seriously have considered writing some serious fanfic involving the Tartleton twins. Because, shit, those boys were sort of the business.

Things I have done and not done lately

Done: Read a delightful and fascinating David Foster Wallace review/essay (I mean he calls it a review but comethefuckon) of a Dostoevsky biography.

Not done: Read a word of Dostoevsky since limping through Crime and Punishment years and years ago, only realising embarrassingly late in the business that I had sort of totally confused two guys whose names were really really similar and, you know, really really Russian.

Sentences I didn't imagine I'd ever get to say #13

"Yeah I broke the heel of my brogue while hiking a closed trail in Italy."

Things that worry me about the trailer for the new The Great Gatsby film:

1. Basically everything. Oh fuuuuck.

It's a snip

The last time I had my hair cut short short it was a couple of days before I had to have my photo taken for a magazine (tragically the first and last time my face I ever appeared in a woman's glossy and, yes, I believe the world is still in mourning the loss).  This was years ago when I was living in London, still quite fresh out of uni and wondering what the hell I was going to do with an English honours degree and a thesis on the short stories of Philip K Dick. In hindsight this was, perhaps an unwise time in my life to be making bold hair decisions but at the time it felt right. This shoot – and the magazine gig that came with it – would, I felt sure, the start of something and so it seemed appropriate to have a New Kate to present to the world, as if the world actually gave two shits.

As it turned out I was both right and wrong. The gig DID prove to be the start of my journalism career and I’m forever grateful to the mag in question. As for the New Kate Haircut it was... well, okay, so again with the benefit of hindsight I have no idea why I chose to go to the random hairdressing salon whose sole virtue was its proximity to my East Sheen home - about 10 metres from the front door - and absolutely nothing else. I never saw another customer going in or out of that place during the year I lived there. But in fairness to my hairdresser I didn't half mind the cut until I got to the photo shoot and met my hair and make-up lady. Slapping on more make-up than seemed feasibly able to fit on my face and enough mascara to hold up a bridge she didn't say an awful lot until it got to my hair.

"This is... not a good haircut," she said. "It's uneven." And she pulled on different parts of my hair to... I don't know, presumably show me how uneven it was. I said nothing. I was embarrassed. I didn't know what to say except maybe "fuck you, Lady" which didn't occur to me until much later. In case I had missed the salient point she offered me a summary: "You're a pretty girl and this haircut does nothing for you." If she hadn't softened it up with the "pretty girl" bit I might have burst into tears right then. Instead I smiled for the camera, buried the photo deep in a desk drawer somewhere and never cut my hair short again.

Until this weekend when I finally lopped it all off. Tempting fate I thought it would be greeeeat fun to get it cut in Milan, bearing in mind that my Italian vocabulary is limited to asking for a table for two and/or a hot chocolate with cream please and sometimes I can't even handle that much and forget to ask for the cream (repeat after me: "con panna").

I had nothing to worry about, at least not on the language front. My hairdresser, Valentina, was both a peach and spoke extremely good English. More importantly she looked cute and tough, which is exactly the kind of person I want to cut my hair in the hope that a bit of that will rub off on me and somehow translate into my haircut. I told Valentina I didn't really know what I wanted, she assured me that she knew exactly what I wanted, gave me a pretty stellar head massage and we were off. I couldn't understand any of the Italian magazines available for reading, which was a bummer, but I amused myself by watching in the mirror as one handsome dude gave another handsome dude a haircut and, you know, day dreaming just a little bit about said handsome dudes. Valentina did a pretty good job, I think, and I was very happy right up until this bit that happened at the end.


Valentina: How do you want it blow-dried? Straight or wavy?

Me: Hmm, uh, what do you think?

Valentina: I like your natural wave, I think is great.

Me: Okay, that sounds fine.

Valentina: We'll make you look like... Betty Boop!

Me: Uh....

Have you ever seen Betty Boop after she's stuck her finger in an electrical outlet? I have. I saw her in the mirror that day. When Valentina turned me around in the chair to face the mirror (having held my head upside for the past ten minutes so she could blow-dry ten types of crap out of it) I actually laughed, which seems rude now but at the time I thought she can't be serious. This is just Step One in a series of steps to have me looking nice - it has to be. There was no Step Two and she was serious, a point she underlined by saying very sweetly and untruthfully "you look greeeeeat". 


Another person might have asked very nicely, if perhaps my hair could be styled a little less nuts so that I might walk on the streets of Milan without fear of ridicule. A more, confident, functioning member of society might have suggested that the fact my hair felt crispy to the touch may mean she'd applied a smidgen too much hairspray. It will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody who knows me to learn I am not that person. I am a wimp. I am a pussy. I have never even come close to sending back food at a restaurant and I once found a hair on my muffin in one of my favourite cafes. So I smiled, determinedly avoiding my own reflection in the mirror, nodded and said "I really like it" several times in a weird high voice that wasn't entirely mine but felt like it maybe suited the girl in the mirror with her weird high hair and fast-reddening cheeks. Then I paid up, got out of there, put on my Persols and tried to get lost in the Milanese crowds.

Today...

... I saw a woman bring her own spittoon to a wine tasting. I... just... so many questions.

Desire

Forever ago my chum, Johnsy, and I were discussing what we would be prepared to give up at gunpoint: music or books. For me it was easy - much as I would miss music like a bitch, life wouldn't be worth living without books - and for him it was equally easy, albeit the opposite answer. Most of the time I'm a hundred per cent sure I made the right call but sometimes I wonder. Take these lovely lines, some of my favourites, from the wonderful Geoffrey Hill on desire.

"One cannot lose what one has not possessed.

So much for that abrasive gem.

I can lose what I want. I want you."

(Geoffrey Hill)

Beautiful, of course, and still heartbreaking to me, years and years after I first read them. But are they definitely MORE beautiful and MORE heartbreaking than Anna Calvi on the same subject? Tomorrow I'll be back in my corner, willing to back the written word against the one that's sung every time. But tonight I just... can't... decide who said it best.

The Schlecks make it look easy.

The worst part of the bike ride was the realisation that the descents weren't going to be the cruisey parts where I could relax and save my flagging energy: they were going to be the terrifying bits where I held onto my handlebars, ignored the sweat sliding down my back and arms and face and tried not to die.

No, wait, I tell a lie: that first terrifying descent down the hill, on shitty bitumen, my bike vibrating beneath my hands, was probably only the second worst bit - the really worst bit came 33km in.

A bike ride through Tuscany accompanied by a guide to direct us towards some local sites of interest, had sounded like it could be a nice idea. Briefly I pictured an old school bike with a wicker basket on the front, floppy hats for all and a nice plinky soundtrack. Maybe some flower picking would be on the cards. I don't know. It could happen.

Then it came to the day of the ride and despite my delusions expectations I started to get nervous.

"You've told them that I'm completely inexperienced, right?" I asked Andy for about the tenth time.

"I told him you weren't very experienced."

"VERY experienced - that makes it sound like I have ANY experience."

"No, wait, I didn't say 'very'," Andy said rather hastily proving that in life, as on the bike, he can backpedal with the best of them.

I had a reason to care. It wasn't just that I hadn't been on a bike for a good decade (ok minus a trip to Rottnest where the biggest hill I had to get up was that gentle slope that leads to the Basin and is routinely bested by five-year-olds on trikes) it's that I was becoming increasingly concerned my ideas about wicker baskets and floppy hats may be... misplaced and our guide, Marco, was going to expect us to rock up in matching Lycra onesies. I did not own a Lycra onesie.

Before leaving for Italy I'd gone shopping for bike-appropriate shorts, knowing Andy would try to coax me onto one of the fuckers. I like shopping but this trip was not a fun experience because... well, the thing is, I fucking HATE shorts. I think shorts look fucking terrible on almost all women with few exceptions, generally of the long-legged and super lithe variety. Shorts turn sumptuous arses into puffy thrown cushions, perfectly regular, uh, front-bottoms into camel toe nightmares and make the owners of already stumpy legs look like front-running candidates for the Mayor of Stumpington. Even when women look good in shorts - and I see them every now and again, I really do - I feel like they look good DESPITE the shorts not BECAUSE OF the shorts. Nor did it help that the two options available in the shops when I was looking fell into one of two categories: 1) Shorts anyone can wear if they don't mind looking like their Mum does while weeding the garden, and 2) Shorts that will suit a long-legged 18-year-old who believes a half-glimpsed vagina makes the best fashion accessory.

I digress. What I'm trying to say is that I didn't buy shorts and thus really had no cycle appropriate clothes. What I had was a pair of black leggings that - much as I'm really not onboard the whole leggings thing either (and GOD when did I become so crotchety about What The Kids Are Wearing Today?) - I figured I could pop on under one of my many wee dresses to avoid displaying the Good China to passerbys. Do I even need to mention that I also didn't have a pair of sneakers with me? No? Good. Because I know you, reader, agree with me that a simple black brogue is the perfect cycling shoe.

That was all before I got on the bike and realised that I should have worried less about my kinda ridiculous outfit and more about these kinda ridiculous hills. Watching riders do descents in the Tour de France has always terrified me because they're going SO GODDAMN FAST but at least I figure they, unlike me, know what they're doing. You know what else terrified me? Marco's advice to me before we set off, which went something like: "When you go downhill don't brake on the corners because that is the dangerous time to brake and your bike-" Here he abandoned words to use a hand gesture that I assumed was intended to signify my bike sliding sideways, sending me and it down a ravine to certain death. I nodded politely, wishing he'd mentioned this before I'd put on my helmet and straddled the bike. The upshot was that, too terrified to brake, on our very first (and, as it turned out, the steepest) descent I was all over the road, trying to avoid pedestrians (oh yeah there were pedestrians) and not even trying to stay out of the way of potentially oncoming cars because staying out of the middle of the road was not an option if I wanted to stay on the road at all. At one point Marco materialised beside me but the only words I could understand were: "slow down".

Things improved, of course they did. My best move was ignoring Marco's advice and braking like a motherfucker more or less the whole way down all subsequent hills, which cramped my hands into weird claws for awhile there but also slowed me down just enough so I could steer/stay on the road/avoid cars/stay alive. And because the scenery really was very very picturesque the flats parts of the ride were rather enjoyable. Of the ascents, the worst of which I survived only by putting my bike on the very lowest of low gears, I shall not speak.

Then came the actual worst bit, a little after our bike computers ticked over the 30km mark. I was feeling pretty good. Before we'd set out Andy had asked Marco how far the ride would be and I remembered his answer: 33km. At the time it sounded like a long way. Now, just 3km from our destination, I was stoked. I'd survived! I didn't even feel that bad. I mean, yeah, my arse hurt rather a lot, my hands were cramped and a river of sweat was snaking down my back but I had survived without getting off my bike or bursting into tears. Soon enough we hit the 33km mark and stopped at a little cafe near some picturesque hot springs where locals came to bathe.

It was then, quaffing down a croissant and waiting for my face to turn back to its normal colour, that I realised the obvious: we were not back where we had started from. Marco's words before we set off hadn't meant that the entire ride was 33km: he'd meant our destination - the hot springs - was 33km away. We still had to make it home. Shaky on my feet I brushed the croissant crumbs from my mouth and quietly expressed my concerns: it wasn't going to be another 33km ride home... was it? Marco was quick to hose down my fears in his reassuring Italian way: no, no, of course it wouldn't be another 33km, it was more like... well let's say 27km.

I neither broke down and wept nor gnashed my teeth but Andy saw my face and sensed all was not well in my world.

I won't go on to describe the ride home and the many times I wished for death, nor Andy's cunning plan, bless him, that saw me avoid climbing the last brutal hill which, I'm moderately sure, may actually have killed me or at least resulted in a very unpleasant and immature extended crying jag by the side of the road. All I will say is this: I rode 53km without shedding any visible tears, giving up or screaming obscenities and this feat is only partly diminished by the fact that I literally spent the rest of the day tucked up in bed, having consumed a giant Nutella crepe. The crepe was delicious and I will likely never ride again.

Me... want

French brainbox Andre Breton said of love: "All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name."

I think it's fair to say this is exactly the thing he could not name.

People I have met and loved in Italy

The waitress at the Montepulciano wine bar we went to several nights ago who, this evening, drove out to our B&B (a good, I don't know, 15 minute drive to the middle of nowhere) to return my beautiful Persols, which I had left behind on the table. Impressive.

People I have met and hated in Italy

The woman at one of the Montepulciano-adjacent wineries we went to today. It was not that she wasn't nice (she was), polite (fine) and interesting (sure). It was the fact that she moved to Italy three years ago to write a book and is having said book published in the summer. Therefore, clearly, my hatred is fuelled solely by bone-crushing envy and it goes without saying that I barely CHOKED out my insincere "I'll look out for your bo-ok!" goodbye. If she hadn't been a sincerely unattractive woman (sorry, lady) I would seriously be considering Single White Femaling her arse.

Things I have learned in Italy: How to be zen in the face of road terrors

This will likely surprise absolutely nobody who has had me as a (perpetually nervous) passenger in his or her car but I am a terrible passenger. I worry about whether the driver has seen that cyclist up ahead. I fret that the driver seems too preoccupied with changing CDs to notice the car up ahead that is about to attempt an ill-advised u-turn. I eye the speedo and decry the existence of this "parallax error" my Dad keeps trying to tell me about.

I trace my backseat driver wussiness way back to when I was a very little kid and my Mum rolled our Toyota en route to swimming lessons. It wasn't Mum's fault and it all happened so quickly that Dad probably got the biggest scare (by a freakish coincidence the van rolled right outside my parents' doctors surgery, where Dad was sitting in the front room with a patient) but it scared ten types of shit out of me and for months after I couldn't be driven anywhere without asking Mum or Dad to "please slow down" approximately every two minutes.

So faced with the prospect of being driven around Italy for nearly a month (there's some confusion about whether I'm listed as a driver under the insurance so, to date, I've not got behind the wheel although this may actually be because Partner Andy thinks I'm a terrible driver doomed to kill us both) should leave me in a state of unrelenting terror. Well... it has and it hasn't. Because the thing is that Italian drivers are nuts. Yes, all the stereotypes are true. I mean: what the FUCK Italy? Indicators? You have them. Staying in your lane? Look into it. Also, the weird intersections where all the traffic lights are flashing orange and everybody is just going all over the place? I genuinely don't know if it's just the lights indicating (as they would at home in Australia) that they're out of order or if that's just a thing that Italy does sometimes. Because the latter seems very very possible.

In the face of all this madness, and a handful of rather long drives, it's useless to remain hypervigilant and try to point out to the driver that the car coming towards you is in the wrong lane, doesn't have his lights on and may or may not be driven by a 12-year-old child with a dog on his lap. At a certain point all one can do is sit quietly in the seat, turn one's head to admire the beautiful rolling hills and thank fuck for a day's worth of wine tastings, which have put you into a near coma so that, should death come at a particularly hazardous intersection, at the least you'll go peacefully.

Savage by name

I'm on holidays for most of this month so my posting is likely to be a bit stop-starty because I'm pretty sure nobody wants to read me wanking on about how lovely Montepulciano is this time of year. Instead, to say thanks for stopping by allow me to direct you towards Dan Savage's latest column, if only for this truly terrific phrase which I intend to drop into as many conversations as is humanely possible. Which, realistically, is probably zero:

What you're doing is handing me a dog with a bloody, torn-up ass and saying, "Hey, Dan, I totally screwed the pooch. Unscrew it for me, wouldya?

See? Charming. You can read the rest here.

Signs I am getting old.

1. These slippers look genuinely more awesome than any of the heels I've seen in shops lately. (Photo obviously not mine but courtesy of The (wonderful) Sartorialist).

2. I'm finally come around to the fact that I would rather buy a handful of pairs of semi-expensive stockings than the cheap shitty one because my LORD do they ever last longer. Also they just feel better and, you know, my legs have been good to me and they deserve it damnit.

3. It's a little after 9pm, I'm on holidays and I'm curled up in my giant bed awaiting room service. Tie me doooown.

Things that scare me about my super posh hotel

1. There is a library. Not like a room where everyone dumps his or her battered Jodi Picoult novels but a proper library with books I am too scared to take down off the shelf. I'm not even sure you're ALLOWED to take them off the shelf. Look, there are a pair of Chesterfields in there - you know what I'm talking about.

2. On the walk from the car to our room I passed maybe seven employees and, mysteriously, no other guests.

3. One wall is a mirror that is also a television and a computer. Needless to say I cannot, for my life, figure out how to control the fucker.

4. I just ate five euros worth of nuts without realising it. They were on my bedside table! The wee jar was so little! They were kinda tasty!

To the Douchebags who stole my car

1. Thanks for not crashing it... I guess. You could have fucked shit up in the Yaris so I guess I'm grateful for the fact the only damage is a bit of weird scuffing on the back bumper I assume you incurred running over old ladies for kicks.

2. Thanks also for spilling an INSANE amount of crisp crumbs throughout the back seats. I mean, really? You had to really make sure those crumbs have made their way into every conceivable crevice? You couldn't have just... EATEN the fucking chips? Oh, that's not how they do things in Gosnells?

3. Thanks also for making sure you smashed up the beautiful china tiered tray that I had (stupidly) left in the backseat after using it for a party. I mean, you probably had to go out of your way to really smash that up so good work, guys, hope you're feeling good about that. Real classy fucking move.

4. Look, I COULD explain why there was a pair of knickers in my glove box but... I won't. Yeah I hope it's fucking EATING YOU UP INSIDE wondering what a pair of bonds briefs was doing in there along with the car manual and my spare pair of sunnies.

5. You are a blight on society and I hope one day I get to, I don't know, cut you off in traffic or bump you really rudely in the street and not apologise. Hey, maybe I'll even get to the bar at a pub after you and not tell the barman you were there first when he tries to take my order. That's right: I WILL SAY GOOD DAY TO YOU SIRS.

Dear Roman Girls

Please, PLEASE stop rocking those amazingly cute bob hairstyles AND that whole thing with the short skirts and the Dunlop Volley-style sneakers. You're killing me. Not only do you look super cute and make me jealous but you're starting to delude me into thinking that I too could pull of said look. Which I could not. That is all.

The Limitations of Books

Things The Talented Mr Ripley Taught Me About Positano

1. How to hire a boat.
2. How to kill a man on said boat, assume his identity and get away with it.


Things The Talented Mr Ripley Did Not Teach Me About Positano

1. Whether it is possible to have large quantities of food delivered to my frankly amazing balcony so I never have to leave it.
2. Whether any of these precarious cliff-side buildings have ever just fallen off into the sea.
3. How to rearrange my life so I can move here and never leave.

Avenge THIS (no I don't know what I meant by that)

You know how people in emotionally or physically abusive relationships can get so fucked up that they wind up thinking they're the one with the problem, even as their Significant Other uses his or her chest as an ashtray? Yeah that's basically how I feel about The Avengers. I mean, I love a good superhero movie and I have a deep and abiding love for Joss Whedon but this movie... left me cold. I was bored. BORED. Which is, to my mind, the one thing you shouldn't be while watching a rompy action film. And yet the positive, glowing reviews keep coming and each day I ask myself again: am I the one with the problem?

It really sucks that

My Uncle Jack has to die and yet so many useless pricks get to live on. I know this is kind of an obvious, fundamental life truth most people grasp at the age of about 10 but STILL.

Question

Are Roman boys actually super cute from birth or is it just that they know how to dress and they're not afraid to spend time on their hair?